


No Way To Forget (Just Want To Get Some Sleep)

by mihrsuri



Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25064401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: What the ghosts had told him of had come true after all [From a tumblr prompt by kitsunesongs in which Henry Tudor travels through time somehow and finds out Some Things]
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	No Way To Forget (Just Want To Get Some Sleep)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Meet Me On The Battlefield by Svrcina

It had come true, is his first thought when Henry thinks of the ghostly apparition of Jane that had told him Edward would die young when he reads about his son who had survived childhood, but only barely. He had gone, as Arthur had gone but there was no brother to take his place. 

He looks at his sons diary - at the rigidity that comes more and more through as the little boy Henry had known disappears and can feel tears running down his face. His son is dead and he had died far far too soon. 

-

What shocks him is…he is hated. A part of him wants to rage at it, wants to say that they do not understand, this new world in which monarchy reigns, not rules - that he had feared strife and civil war and pain for his people or rule by another if there had been no prince. And how could he allow treason? 

-

When he hears of Mary as Bloody Mary Henry stops. Nearly throws the device he is holding across the room. Surely, surely not the kind hearted little girl he had held in his arms? Surely not the woman he had known at the end of his life, who might have hardened, might have been in pain but had loved her siblings. 

He is proud of her, he admits, that she made herself a Queen and reigned and ruled and even at first, with great love. He can see the little girl he had known through her reign as well - even despite everything. He can even see her love for her little sister, even through her cruelty and it pains him, in truth to see it so starkly laid out. 

-

Gloriana. The golden age. Art and music and exploration. Good Queen Bess. Perhaps the greatest monarch in English History. Plays and theatres and political brilliance. The Virgin Queen. She wore a ring all her life and her…her mothers image was within it. 

“I said that perhaps this little girl would preside over empires” Henry says to empty air. “I said…oh Bess. Oh my little Bess.” 

He had always been proud of her. Despite…despite everything. And he wants to dig up Thomas Seymours bones and burn them himself, if they had not rotted beneath the ground. 

-

“Of course she was innocent Henry. It was a farce of a trial but then, we’ve always thought that you knew that - that you directed it to get rid of her.”

“…well I shouldn’t say that - there’s always been historical debate over whether it was you, Cromwell or both but what we do know is that she was entirely innocent of all the charges.” 

Henry stops. He can’t. He isn’t sure he is even still here, that the world hasn’t somehow frozen and he is somewhere else entirely because he cannot be sitting here, in this room, in this new world, hearing that the world…that she was…that…

“Of course there’s some thought that you…well, that you knew but you didn’t want to know. That you told Cromwell to solve the problem or die and well..he solved the problem. And Cromwell had decided Anne was a liability to him, to the country and to you.” 

He tries to say something and finds he cannot.


End file.
